1958 - TEENAGE CAVE MAN - another Corman quicky

Not the worst film ever made as stated by its star Robert Vaughn but you can tell that Roger Corman  knocked this epic out in a few days.

Vaughn looking like one of the best groomed cavemen in the movies.  Sulks around for about an hour with a goofy bow and arrow that he invents.  He and his fellow cavemen are searching for food.  It seems that across the river is a lush land of fruit and vegetables but caveman law will not allow anyone to go there

Naturally Vaughn, not only being a caveman is also a rebel caveman as well.  So off he goes across the river where he encounters a monster.  The monster is a typical low budget Corman touch and provides the twist ending to this epic.

 

Cheaply made, the film has the major virtue of being barely over an hour in its running time.

65 minutes, written by one of Corman's regular writers, R. Wright Campbell .

1939 - STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE, a true story made up of fiction

We're in Africa with Spencer Tracey as explorer Henry Stanley and his faithful companion Jeff played by a really out of place actor Walter Brennan who should be hanging around with John
Wayne instead of Tracy.  The two of them are searching for Dr David Livingstone who the world assumes has died somewhere in darkest Africa.

After a lot of adventures involving the native population chasing Stanley and his safari around.  Henry Stanley does indeed run into Livingstone in the middle of nowhere.  You would think this would be the end of the film, but no.  When Stanley returns to England it seems no one will believe him.  This plot development takes up the rest of the film.

Since this is one of Daryl F Zanuck's personal projects. The production values are at a very high standard.  Zanuck also assigned the direction to one of his best directors Henry King.  The film is very watchable.  Zanuck even sent a 2nd unit crew to Africa to catch lots of background footage for authenticity.  The problem with this film is that it is almost entirely false.

A couple of minutes on the Wikipedia page for Henry Stanley is quite a different story, Stanley was an exploiter of the African continent for the Belgium government, a racist and probably a murderer.  This was not the true story that would have played well the movie going audiences at this time.  The best thing to be said about this film is that the cast is interesting.

101 minutes.

1925 - THE BIG PARADE, a classic war film, maybe.

Considering the high reputation of this famous film, I was little surprised to see how much comedy relief there was in the first hour of this film.  I had always assumed that this was for the most part a very serious war drama.  

MGM's big star from this era, John Gilbert always seemed like a pretty boy actor for the most part.  However King Vidor or someone had him trim his mustache and he actually looks like a real person for a change.  He gives a decent performance as well.

King Vidor was one of those American film directors who could impose a person style even in a cookie cutter studio like MGM.  The battle scenes are very impressive and have an interesting visual style to them.

After consideration The Big Parade is a very good film somewhat hampered by some of the usual Hollywood storytelling, a love story, funny soldier buddies, settings that look like studio backlot sets, etc.

141 minutes, written by Laurence Stallings and Harry Behn.